Four Stories, Four Ideas

Powerful ideas are conveyed in comparatively simple stories, easily remembered and passed on. The first 11 chapters of Genesis tell four compelling tales, each with a beautiful or haunting message.

1 | Creation

The Storyline: An exquisite world is spoken into existence.
The Point: All good things begin with a sovereign, all-powerful, creative, personal provider God.

2 | The Fall

The Storyline: Humanity undergoes a catastrophic moral collapse.
The Point: God has granted the terrifying courtesy of choice. With choice comes responsibility; with responsibility comes the Divine assessment we call judgment.

3 | The Genesis Flood

The Storyline: Floodwaters sweep the world away in a disaster of devastating proportions.
The Point: There is a moral compass: the revealed heart of God. Disregard it and hellish consequences follow. Respond to it, and, even in our imperfection, we will be sustained by the kind and forgiving grace of God.

4 | The Tower of Babel
The Storyline: Humanity undertakes a futile, ambitious building enterprise and, in the process, disintegrates into confusion.
The Point: In the arrogance of human ambition, the smallness of humanity is revealed, but the grandeur of God fills the universe.

© 2005

Love Expressing Itself

I thumbed through a Bible the other day, tracing out the idea of kindness. I found the word used side by side with friendship and generosity, hospitality and warmheartedness, doing good and expressing love, being helpful and showing sympathy. I saw kindness coupled with understanding, patience, courtesty, thoughtfulness, compassion and forgiveness.

The Bible expresses the idea unmistakably. It is love that proves we have faith. Well, it's kindness that proves we have love.

Strong Help, Limitless Possibilities

Think about the complexities of Creation. God is the one who dreamed up aardvarks and sequoias, cashews and laughter, aurora borealis and touch. He thought up Creation and then made it happen.

God has all power. He can do anything.

Think about your bad habits and realize God can help you change them. Think about love and know that God invented it and shows us its highest form. Think about thought itself and ponder this: God made your mind.

God has all power. He can do anything. And how does he use this awesome, unlimited power? It is unleashed for good. For our good.

© 2005

Do You Want to Get Well?

You realize you are ill. Your stomach is churning, your head is throbbing, your eyes hurt. Your shivering convinces you of your fever. You are weak and lightheaded, and the symptoms persist. By the time you make it to the doctor, you are genuinely concerned -- a concern you see mirrored on his face. But he reassures you, gives you an accurate diagnosis, stuffs a prescription in your hand. You leave his office knowing that your restored health is as simple as following a few instrucitons and being patient with the healing process.

Upon returning home, you put the medication aside. You disregard the instructions to force liquids and get plenty of rest. Not surprisingly, your health fails to improve. If anything, it worsens. At times, this concerns you -- so much so that you take out the medications and the doctor's instructions and spend a few minutes looking at them. Nevertheless, looking at them is as far as it goes.

Now, what's wrong with this picture?

And James wrote: "Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says."

© 2005

The Kiss of Eternity

There are those moments when time kisses eternity -- just a feathery brush, but it is filled with astounding possibilities.

Do you comprehend what I'm saying?

Are there those times when you KNOW you were made for eternity? When time feels so confining, so ridiculously temporary? Moments when you feel that time is fine, as far as it goes, but you know it just doesn't go far enough.

Do you ever feel as St. Augustine felt?

"Lord, you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are weary until they find their rest in you."

© 2005

Today Is a Blank Page

The page is empty. Well, it was. Sitting there with its blank expression, just daring me -- daring me to write something, anything, across its face.

I think that blank page knew something about me, something I also know about myself. I'd rather leave the page empty than write empty words -- sentences without meaning.

Today is a blank page, standing before me as if to say, "Go ahead! Write something across the facec of this day. But write something that matters. Write something with you life that will change today, that will make it somehow better."

Touch a life with kindness.

Inhale wonder.

Throw your arms wide open and embrace God's surprises.

Do something! Something that matters. Write today! Write it with your breath, your blood, your mind, your feeling, your eyes, your heart, your hands.

Lift your pen, your life. Breathe! Create!

© 2005

God Is a Consuming Fire

When you embrace God, you embrace a consuming fire. Go ahead, take him to your heart, but know what it means. Know what of necessity must be consumed. There are things we hate, but cannot release. In time, they will burn. There are things we love or somehow feel we cannot part with, yet hinder us. They are worthless and, in time, will burn away. There are things that are good, but not yet pure. They will be refined. Our God is a consuming fire, but the things we need, the things that make us better, the things we truly desire will only increase in value as they pass through the flames.

© 2005

Astounding Beginnings

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (Genesis 1:1).

Glancing through a magazine one afternoon, I ran across this imaginative piece of trivia:

If the solar system were shrunk to the size of New York's Manhattan Island, the next nearest star, Alpha Centauri, would be 5,500 miles away, in Jerusalem.

We know, for instance, that traveling at the speed of light, we could reach the sun in about eight minutes. Traveling on at lightspeed, it would take more than four years to reach the next nearest star. At our current rate of space travel, however, it would take 100,000 years.

If we were to shrink the sun to the size of a pin head, the solar system would fill a large living room.

Let's say the living room is in a beach house of the coast of Southern California. Alpha Centauri, that next nearest star, would be on Catalina Island, 26 miles away. Shrunk to this scale, our entire galaxy, the Milky Way, with its 200 billion stars, would be 600,000 miles in diameter. It's not, of course, it's a trillion times larger than that.

Which accounts for one galaxy. But there are more than 10 billion in the observable universe.

"In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth."

© 2005

Burning Gift

A ball of fire suspended in space, millions of miles away, warms me. Today, arctic air touches my face, but still I feel the heat of that fire -- my round, white sun. It's brilliance fills my world. I see by its glow. Its rays force life into the planet, my home. Long, swift fingers of light caress, prod, knead -- pushing, pulling.

Life does trail from those radiant fingertips.

Life and light and warmth.

My star.

My sun.

My fire.

© 2005

The Meaning of Words

It's easy to say, "Lord, my life is yours." I do not stutter through the syllables. My tongue does not twist on the vowels or consonants. I comprehend the quotes, the comma, the period. I do not need a dictionary to decipher these five short words:

"Lord, my life is yours."

The English is easy. But the math is hard.

How can I count the cost?

© 2005

C.S. Lewis on God's Inescapable Presence

"We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade, the presence of God. The world is crowded with him. He walks everywhere incognito."

Richard Paul Evans on the book that is your life

"Rarely do we invest the time to open the book of another's life. When we do, we are usually surprised to find its cover so misleading and its reviews so flawed."

G.K. Chesterton on Self

"Man must have just enough faith in himself to have adventures, and just enough doubt of himself to enjoy them."

George MacDonald on Fear

“Endless must be our terror until we come heart to heart with the fire-core of the universe, the first and the last of the living One.”

Paul Tournier on Prayer

"Prayer constantly enlarges our horizon and our person. It draws us out of the narrow limits within which our habits, our past, and our whole personage confine us."

Ruysbroeck on Love

"Love cannot be inactive; its life is a ceaseless effort to know, to feel, and to realize the boundless treasure hidden within its depths. This is its insatiable desire."

G.K. Chesterton on Thankfulness

"I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder."

Tom Bodett on Obsession

"Obsession must wear itself thin before you can see through it."

Madeleine L'Engle on Stories and Faith

"It is not easy for me to be a Christian, to believe 24 hours a day all that I want to believe. I stray, and then my stories pull me back if I listen to them carefully. I have often been asked if my Christianity affects my stories, and surely it is the other way around; my stories affect my Christianity, restore me, shake me by the scruff of the neck, and pull this straying sinner into an awed faith."

Soren Kierkegaard on Dreams

"I divide my time in this way: half the time I sleep, the other half I dream."